Christmas lights~

Black Christmasmusta joulu. – No snow here in the southernmost part of Finland. Until yesterday – a tiny amount of snow here where I´m living. Very tiny. So it has been this “it´s what´s inside that counts” thing at Christmas this year. Yeah, well, we already did have our ´fourth snow´, too, for this season, here where I´m living, after the third one melted, a bit more snow for some days there was again, but it all melted just before Christmas…

Now some pictures:

Christmas tree

These first two pictures I took on Monday. We have our first ever Christmas tree in this house. Love the atmosphere and the scent!

~Christmas tree and Christmas food, chocolate, coffee, glögi and watching television, Netflix, Finnish Yle Areena, etc. and enjoying the outdoors a bit and reading, thinking… Mostly. Between Christmas and New Year as well.

cones in Christmas tree

And the tree even has cones! It´s black spruce.

Christmas Day walk

I´m not usually on the track, but when it´s Christmas Day, I am. There is a bit longer uphill part there on the track, not a steep one, but you can really feel that you go uphill, and I was just thinking “What the hell am I doing here Now?” But at the end of the track, it all started to feel just nice. 🙂

Two more on Christmas Day,, at night:

white Christmas... lights

White Christmas… lights, on the lilac bush in our front yard.

Outside our living room.

And the snow then finally:

Snow! :)

Yesterday morning. A pleasant surprise and this really makes a big difference! Our ´fifth snow´ for this season is this…

December

In the daytime, still no natural light yesterday.

December
December

Coffee pic yesterday.

hyacinth

Hyacinth, the scent…

hyacinth
December

Yesterday evening, here in our home village.

Pictures today:

December

Coffee pic by the rose bush Rosa Splendens, Valamonruusu.

It´s a colder day today, it´s -5 degrees Celsius, but they say that it feels like -11 degrees Celsius, now, around 11 am.

December

There was some natural light coming my way! 😀

December
December

Sunshine!

December

The days are already getting longer. The length of the day today, here where I´m living, is 5 h 32 min.

  • Leena

Maytime

Everything is growing, everything is green, and there are flowers, too, everywhere! Well, we already had a cold period again, it was a short one, but it was hailing and snowing. Nothing stayed on the ground though, it was just snowing and hailing and the sun was shining as well, at the same time, too, again. – Business as usual.

And now we’ve had warm days again – around 15 degrees Celsius and around 20 degrees Celsius it has been, yesterday it was a bit above 20 degrees Celsius and today it’s already 23 degrees Celsius. Feels like summer for us! 🙂

May
~”Taller than the trees”

A pic today. There suddenly was a random tulip bulb in my hands last autumn, and I planted it here thinking that it might be nice to have a single tulip blooming beside my dwarf spruce. Well, it is! And the tulip is taller than my tree. 🙂

May
~Hiding… someone’s always hiding…? 😀

A ladybug or ladybird was hiding in our pear tree yesterday, I saw her (?) again today, in the pear tree, she had come out from her hiding place…

May

A dandelion in our garden, it is like… two dandelions in one – a broad stem and two different flowers, hmm…

May

We went for a walk by the lake Pyhäjärvi here in our home village yesterday.

May

In the woods there… This doesn’t look bad in pictures, but it looks more impressive in nature, the tree really is bigger in nature, and I always am strangely awed by this big tree that has come down…

May
May
May

Another big tree, a very old birch tree

May
May

We already have the smaller greenhouse in the corner of our terrace. We will have another greenhouse in our garden, a bigger one. This is what we have there now; the ground (foundation not quite ready yet) for the greenhouse and marigold flowers (as a symbol of hope ;D ) – we still have to build, assemble the greenhouse as well…

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Spring waving from a distance…

…and spring is ‘throwing it right at you’ – snow, hail and shine, too! And it has been a bit colder again.

The first five pictures I took in our garden on Sunday. Sunday – funday: first the sun was shining, then some dark clouds started to appear in the sky, and then the sun was shining and it was snowing at the same time, and after that it was just cloudy and it was snowing, and then again clouds were going away and the sun was shining again, and after that again; dark clouds were appearing in the sky and the sun was shining and it started to snow at the same time… – This pattern continued all day.

March

And at one point it was hailing as well. The sun was still shining on the right-hand side when I took the picture above.

March

Spring says hello…

March

So there’s that…

March

I know what triggers you.

March

Solar power.

Three pictures that I took yesterday:

March

Coffee pic… Just to tell that the sun wasn’t exactly shining, but the scent of the coffee was wonderful, and that it was snowing yesterday, too.

March

And a bit later… Nordic walking in the forest. Ravens were croaking there, and it was snowing a bit.

purple coneflower & daisy, March
Echinacea purpurea or purple coneflower (bigger leaves) and daisy.

Purple coneflower and daisy growing in our kitchen…

And pictures that I took today:

March

Having coffee again today. ;D And the sun is shining.

March
From the garden bench.
dwarf spruce, March
~Hi!~

My dwarf spruce was completely buried under snow, now she’s back. 🙂

Sofian maailma
Sofian maailma, Sophie’s World.

I am about to finish reading this book, Sofian maailmaSophie’s World – A Novel About the History of Philosophy by Jostein Gaarder. It’s a great book! And a great adventure. And it’s a bit heavy book – there was a week I couldn’t read it, I couldn’t hold the book in my hands, because it was too heavy for my shingles…

March
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Snowy

It snowed quite a lot in the evening on Tuesday and at night between Tuesday and yesterday. And it was very windy. The storm had been even record-breaking for a while at the sea. It was windy yesterday, too, but the sun was shining. Well, about the snow… must always say this, but this is quite a lot snow for us here in southern Finland – in eastern Finland and northern Finland, for example, they always have a lot more, that’s only natural. 🙂

The first pictures I took in the morning yesterday:

January

My dwarf spruce. Hopefully it survives the winter…

January

Hmm… Our car.

January

The wind made it look a bit different…

January

…but beautiful.

January
January

By the lake Pyhäjärvi near our home at noon yesterday. There was a chilly wind…

January

And in our garden in the afternoon.

January

And today:

composter, temperature
Year-round composter

It’s warm inside the composter in our garden.

It’s -11 degrees Celsius outside now at around 11.30 am. But they say that it “feels like -16 degrees Celsius”. Yes, it does feel a bit like that, but it’s not windy anymore and the sun is shining.

January
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Christmas, lights, flowers…

Now just pictures from Sunday, Tuesday and yesterday.

December
December

They were giving away these ‘bushes’, autumn plants with different colours, at a store, and I chose these three. The Ibiza lizard is covered in snow a bit.

December

From where I watch television and eat and drink coffee…

ice lantern

We made two ice lanterns for Christmas. I named this one a ‘Red-letter day’…

December

I was taking a picture of the sun yesterday. It’s was down there hiding behind the trees…

December

“Well, move!”, I said to myself. “It’s up to you, you know…” ;D

poinsettia

This year I have a pink poinsettia, not a red one. – It was a plan… 😉 I was waiting for some ‘direct sunlight’ to get the poinsettia look natural in a picture… the colours.

hyacinth

Well, hashtag nofilterneededHyacinth. This year one of my hyacinths is a bit different, too. – It’s dark pink, not light pink.

hyacinth
I love blue Christmas lights! ;)

I planted this dwarf spruce in the autumn. And I already have a picture of it on my Instagram without and with these Christmas or winter lights. Here it is in the dark, with the blue Christmas lights. – Blue winter lights, my dream…

And here’s another video from our trail camera, or animal camera that we had in my boyfriend’s forest. Night-time wanderers, moose! :

  • Leena

Collecting stuff

We collected acorns in October.

acorns

First these…

acorns

…and then these – about 300 acorns in total. Some of the acorns were already sprouting, lovely. 🙂 We collected them from the ground, under big oak trees, here in our home village.

The first two pictures I took in October, the rest of the pictures in this blog post I took today.

acorns planted

So, we planted the acorns in our garden, here…

acorns planted

…and here.

And we also collected some acorns for the land that my boyfriend now has in the region of Etelä-PohjanmaaSouth Ostrobothnia, about 180 kilometres north from our home, that is to say, we already planted the acorns there, into the forest ground. There’s a certain spot or place, an island actually, where broad-leaved trees are growing in the forest, but there are no oak trees, not yet…

So, this is all an experiment, with these acorns, just nice and interesting.

spruce cones

I collected spruce cones, too. These were on the ground in our yard, on the driveway. We don’t have big spruce trees, but there are spruces just outside our yard. I started to collect these just because I think that they are lovely, but my boyfriend said that we could try to get seeds from these as well. Well, that’s a good idea, an interesting experiment, too. The cones have been drying inside the house now.

emptying a compost bin

And I was shoveling compost, emptying a compost bin a bit today. We have this year-round composter for kitchen (and garden) waste.

emptying a compost bin

We shovel the compost into this container, where the process continues, and in the end, it all goes back to nature again. 🙂

-Leena